Wrongful Convictions

The American Academy of Forensic Sciences meeting concluded at the end of February, having been held in a very cold Chicago. Three members of the FDS team attended the conference that had a focus on the inter-disciplinary nature of the 11 sections of the Academy. We will post more details …

BACKGROUND: Robert Lee Stinson was convicted of the 1985 murder of a Milwaukee woman. Stinson’s conviction rested almost exclusively on bite-mark identification purporting to match Stinson’s teeth to bite patterns found on the victim’s body. (Dr. L Thomas Johnson, a Wisconsin bite mark analyst, testified at Stinson’s trial for a …

A special edition of Forensic Science International has been published focussed on issues within forensic odontology. A number of papers relate specifically to bitemarks. You can read the abstracts of the papers by clicking here. Dr Pretty contributed to this publication by authoring a paper on the apparent paradigm shift …

Ending forensic fraud The Innocence Project has uncovered a range of sceintific abuses since 1992 and has developed recommendations for forensic labs, law enforcement agencies and courts to ensure that forensic science misconduct is prevented whenever possible. The Innocence Project calls for states to impose standards on the preservation and …

. UK DNA Database Initiated under the Labour government the UK collects more DNA, and stores more than almost any other country. Innocence is not a guarantee of removal. While perhaps helpful to the indentification professionals, its the use of such DNA in criminal proceedings that has the human rights groups in …

Even after the Supreme Court tried to rein in expert witnesses willing to testify at the drop of a theory, embattled dentist Michael West and his shining light prove that ‘science’ can be stranger than fiction. If Michael H. West had stuck to what he presumably does best, he might …